Chore charts add up for kids and parents

A chore chart takes some of the pain out of getting your kids to help around the house.

Is housecleaning getting you down? Do you wish your kids pitched in more? Have you tried and failed at implementing a traditional allowance system with your kids?

My answer would be yes to all three questions.

So a couple of weeks ago, I scoured Etsy for a new plan. More Than a Memory caught my interest. You choose the chores, set the prices, and get one board for each child.

Probably you could make this yourself at home, but I was feeling very low on time and inspiration at the moment. Luckily, I had some money in my Pay Pal account, so I was all set to let Etsy be creative for me.

Our new chore chart came on Friday and we've had fun with it all week. (In real life, the two side boards have my children's names on them, but I flipped the boards over for the purpose of privacy.)

When they each reach the $5 mark, they get paid. That keeps me from dolling out a quarter here, a quarter there.

The hard part was figuring out how much to pay for each job. I might have made some key mistakes, I'm not sure yet. I posted this on my personal Facebook wall, and my friends kept joking "Send your kids over to me. I'll pay them $5.50 to clean my whole house!"

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